


The Shimmer and the Splendour

by Zabbers



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: AU for the episode, Episode Fix-It: s10e08 The Lie of the Land, Episode Fix-it, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-09
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-11-11 11:30:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11147511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zabbers/pseuds/Zabbers
Summary: What if the Doctor's trick hadn't been a trick? What if Bill and Nardole had had to turn to Missy for help? What if Missy had learned from the experience?





	The Shimmer and the Splendour

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ravenskyewalker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ravenskyewalker/gifts).



_And she opened her eyes to the shimmer and the splendour..._

"Meadowlark"

~

The doors open without warning, but Missy had just been sitting down to the piano anyway--she’s in her terrarium, her bell jar, her cabinet of curiosities, mild as a knick knack, a paddywhack, throw the man a ligament! The doors open without warning and the Doctor pushes in, quick steps, all frowning and tempestuous, and he trips over a chair and crashes hard in a tangle of limbs and cast iron to the unsparing floor of the vault. 

His frustration’s like a shock wave. He’s full of, oh, yes, yes, that’s what it is, _loathing_ , what a dangerous volatile thing to bring to her and lay at her feet. Especially now.

“Oh, Doctor, you shouldn’t have!” she says, looking down at him from the bench. “What’s the occasion? It isn’t my birthday, I’m reasonably confident of that. Hmm. Is it our anniversary? End of the world?”

The Doctor extricates himself from the chair, hurls it with a terrific metallic scrape into the corner. The furniture knows not to complain; it’s taken a beating before. He rises with a snarl. Stumbles forward, hands probing the dark. 

Of course. The Monks are gone. What did they ever give him, but the sights they wanted him to see? Bill’s told her _everything_. Her report, if very emotional, if too human, if corrupted by the static of her struggle against the mind control, was clear enough. 

“He-- They’ve _turned_ him,” Bill had said, pacing a much smaller ellipse than the Doctor’s customary one, looking down, brow furrowed, but thinking hard, brainstorming at Missy as though she hadn’t a half hour earlier thought the unfortunate creature in the cage was going to be a monster. 

A monster! Just a woman, she’d said to Nardole. Just. Nothing to be frightened of. The way those boys had been carrying on. Missy had tsked sympathetically.

“Tell me all of it, dear.” She’d settled her skirts around her. “Begin at the beginning.”

“Nardole had a tricorder thing. We tracked him to a prison ship off the Orkneys. He, he was just sitting there in this pristine white room, reading from all these sheets of paper that he’d crumple up and toss to the floor around him. Recording his videos. In comfort.” Bill’s lip curled. “I thought we were rescuing him, and he told me he thought the Monks were benevolent. That it’s better this way. The things he said…”

“Go on,” Missy urged, enthralled. 

Bill shook her head. “I was convinced that he had a plan. And then, all of a sudden, I knew that he didn’t. He’d become the friendly, pleasant face of the conquerers. He told people to turn in their loved ones who still remembered that the Monk history was bullshit. I couldn’t believe the Doctor I knew--my tutor!--would do this. I mean, sometimes he’s so alien. Sometimes I don’t know what he’ll do, but...I thought he’d shown me his true colours already. The thing was, I could see--I could see that if he really, truly believed in the Monks, if he was really going along with them, then they’d be here forever. We would never be rid of them.

“I shot him.” Bill looked up, eyes wide with horror. “Oh my god, I shot him!”

Missy blew out a puff of air and rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “So you tried to force a regeneration. We’ve all been there. I’m sure Eggette here would have been driven to same if he weren’t more frightened of me than irritated at him. I’ll make you a trophy with my new 3D printer. When are you bringing me that, by the way? I have a lot of projects in the queue.”

Nardole said something under his breath that wasn’t quite dissent.

“He went all...golden spacetime energy?”

“Regeneration. Only he didn’t, did he?”

“No. He collapsed, but it all went back in him. Nardole said he was just hurt. How did you know he didn’t? What is regeneration? Is that what it sounds like? Is he an alien gecko? If you cut off his hand, do you get a second Doctor?”

“Now, wouldn’t that be fun?” 

She’d have known if he’d regenerated. She didn’t spend so much of her life monitoring his timeline to miss a regeneration or not know when the Doctor was the Doctor. Still-- 

“Come here.” She gestured with her head. “Come up close to the forcefield.”

“Why?”

“I want to taste you.”

“No, thank you?”

“Just close enough for a sniff, then. The shield will protect you. I need to assess the damage you’ve done to the Doctor.”

A glanced check with Nardole, and then the reluctant Bill approached. 

Missy smiled encouragingly. “That’s it. Come on. Little closer.”

The blue shimmer flashed like a warning. Bill stopped short, repelled. Just as well. The radiation exposure would have meant slow death for a human.

Two experimental, delicate sniffs, and then a great big inhalation, chest rising, staring straight into Bill’s dilating pupils. 

“Hmm.”

“Will he be all right?”

“For now. You say the Monks have him on a prison ship? Can you go back and break him out?”

Nardole put his foot down. “Not when he’s not cooperating. We barely escaped ourselves! If Bill hadn’t grabbed that guard’s gun and shot the Doctor, they’d have shot us. And we were almost seen by a Monk; we can’t risk it, we’re too recognisable.”

Missy narrowed her eyes, suddenly focussed. “Why? Why are you recognisable? What’s special about you?”

“Well, we were with the Doctor.”

“No, there’s something else. You’re not telling me everything. What’s the point of seeking my help if you’re keeping some detail from me? Do you _want_ to die? I said to tell me all of it.” She glared. Angry. Imperious.

Both Nardole and Bill shifted their weight uneasily from one side to the other. 

“It was me,” Bill mumbled finally. 

“Excuse me?”

“It was my fault, at least I think it was my fault. I invited them in.”

“Why would you do something idiotic like that?”

“The Doctor was going to die. I asked them to give him his sight back, so he could save himself. And then I shot him.” She's still looking horrified, asking questions of herself. "Did I shoot him because it was my fault? Because I'd created an imbalance? No, that isn't _right_ , not in real life."

Meanwhile, Missy had sprung up from the bench and spun away. She spoke over the deadly dull self-reflection. “Of course you did it. Pure and selfless consent. Of course you would! You’re his companion, that’s what they do.”

She finger-gestured at Nardole. “Eggette. Over here, I want to talk to you.” She walked over to the far side of the piano, as though a few steps made any difference to the confidentiality of the conversation. 

Especially when she conducted it in a loud stage whisper. 

“You’re gonnae have to kill her!”

“What? No! What! Why?”

“She’s the what d'you want to call it, the amplifier. The signal processor. The living brain turning all those badly photoshopped images of the Monks throughout humanity’s milestones into believable history. Without her, they won’t be able to hold on to their ‘benevolent’ dictatorship.”

“I’m not going to just kill her!”

Missy peered over at Bill assessingly. “Well, we could probably convince her to kill herself.”

In the end they hadn't convinced her to kill herself, not exactly. But from where Missy was standing (well off to the side and ready to run should anything go wrong with the transmitter Monk), the plan looked very much like Bill sacrificing herself to do what the Doctor was apparently unable to do. For her part, Missy was ready to push Bill into the proverbial volcano when her limited human mind failed to fight the Monk’s dedicated neural machinery. 

Imagine her surprise when the wee girl triumphed after all. No mental vegetable soup needed!

“An idealised mum, how did you think to use that?” Missy asked, impressed in spite of herself. 

“I...didn't. That image has always been with me. I’ve been building it up, depending on it a lot, these last few months, to blot out the Monks’ message. I thought if it worked for me, it could work for everyone else. Change the transmission. I mean, I know she's not really her, and that I have to depend on myself, but she's kind of like...my inner strength. I know she loved me, and that's got me through a lot.”

“How nice for you." Missy heard the flatness of her own voice, so she smiled brightly. “Well! A pleasure saving your world with you, very eye opening. Really must be getting back to my box now.”

“Do you really have to go back there?” Bill looked uneasy. “You walked right out of the containment field and the vault. What's keeping you? It _is_ a prison, isn't it? I saw how you looked when Nardole and I first came to talk to you. I'm going to be honest, you seem a lot better now.”

Missy turned away, hand already on the chamber door. “My best friend made a promise, some time ago. I'm helping him to honour it. He wants my help...he said so.”

He _does_ want her help, or why would he be here, now of all times? Missy watches the Doctor head hesitantly towards her. Where are his sunglasses, how did he get this far? It's clumsy tech, Missy could easily build him something better if he'd just let her have the tools, but it works for him, and he installed the modifications himself, and it’s _of note_ that he's wandering around without them. 

She says nothing, lets him listen for the hum of the containment field to guide him. She stands right up against it as he walks up to her, the blue rippling and warping in reaction to their proximity. 

“Back in the dark, Doctor?”

He points his face at her. “Did you even notice I was away?”

Six months, she wants to say. In the grand scheme of things, it's nothing, but here in the vault, the passage of time is excruciating. Six months all alone full of all the things other people have been putting into her head--the Monks, the Doctor; it's all the same. Propaganda. Their agendas. Overthrowing the Monks with Bill and Nardole was the most fun she’s had in seventy years.

The Doctor lifts his hand and runs his palm over the energy field. Missy could reach through and take his fingers, but the radiation leaves an unpleasant taste in the back of her mouth and a full-body buzz that distances everything. This isn’t the time for rust and current. 

“I saw you on the telly,” she says, provocative.

He freezes, looks away. “You’re only meant to watch that when I’m here.”

She shrugs. “You weren’t. I heard voices; I had to know what they were on about. I needed to know if it was a takeover or if they were going to blow the place up. It makes a difference, you know. To me personally.”

“They tried to control you, too?”

Missy waves her hand in a dismissive gesture. “Yes, yes, but the Monks are amateurs, they operate half by instinct and half by their own superstitious texts. Easy peasy porridge squeazy. Once I realised who they were I cancelled them out.” 

The expression that comes over his face, then, obstinate, resentful, combative, is not at all new. It is, in fact, at least a thousand nine hundred and ninety two years old. Missy deactivates the containment shield and shoves him backwards into the armchair she knows is behind him. There’s scowling, but then instead of scrambling out of the chair to scuffle with her, he crumples into it, his face in his hand. 

“What was I _doing_?” he asks, incredulous, anguished.

Missy can’t believe she’s opposing the Doctor’s self-loathing. What a long way she’s come. “Making the best of it.”

“I was collaborating!”

“Surviving. Living to fight another day.”

“How could I not _see_?”

Missy leaves a beat.

“Well, literally, they were feeding you false images from their surveillance and simulation matrix. Brainwashing. Mind control. They’re parasites. It’s like zombie fungus. You were the ant. Or maybe you were the spore stalk...”

The Doctor groans.

“I think you threw them for a loop, really, second sentient species, _already_ there for all of humanity’s formative moments. You were living their mythology; they didn’t know whether they should subjugate you or assimilate you.” 

“I betrayed humanity. I promised to care for them.”

Missy chooses not to say anything about the perils of being the subject of the Doctor’s care. She moves down to his level and reaches for his hand. “Let me see. Let me look at you.”

She can feel the energies in flux in him, even barely touching him. Bill shot him, and of course she didn’t kill him, but the failsafes are phasing through their decision trees, still evaluating the correct course of action. 

“If you aren’t careful, you really will regenerate,” she remarks. She can’t help it, she ducks her head down and licks some of the residue from his skin. He gasps, pulls his hand away. 

But she makes a grab for it--“sorry”--and pulls it to her chest, or pulls herself to him, it doesn’t matter which; they meet in the middle. She holds his hand against her with both of hers. She lets a little of the glow flow between them. It feels so good: warm, real, tangible. In this space, in this life they’ve made, very little is. 

“Let me help,” she says, to her own surprise as much as his. “I can help.”

The Doctor makes a skeptical noise. “You?”

She touches his temples, thumbs his cheek. She pushes back the hems of his clothing, looking for his bruises, which she cups with her fingers. Directing his energy with the attraction of her own. 

“There’s an image,” she explains, “that kept the Monks’ lie at bay for me, too. An image for _our_ species, such as it is, on this world. I wouldn’t do what Bill did, I don’t have that kind of compassion, certainly not for our people. Not for the whole universe. Hush, shush! Just listen.”

She leans in to the chair, resting her weight on one knee so that she can press her palms against his eyes like they’re playing a game. He moves to dislodge her, but she won’t let him.

“I saw it, though, her solution. Understood it, if only for a moment.”

Love, Bill called it.

Her hands are warm, her whole body is warm with the glow of her life; her eyes are wet. When she kisses him, she’s not trying to take anything from him, and he relaxes, he stops trying to fight her.

“There’s only ever been one image--besides my own. It used to frighten me that it was so much larger and more vivid, that it could be so strong. I get it now. It isn’t about _goodness _. It isn’t about what you did; maybe it’s about what you do next. But I think it’s about this.”__

It _is_ about this: the Mistress opens herself up. She says _let me help_. She pours her vision into him, into the Doctor, into her friend. She isn’t going to do this for just anybody--she _hasn’t_ been doing any of this, this imposition on her dignity, this mockery of her self-determination, these extracted, impossible promises for just anybody--but, just this once, there is the one image, and he is in need, and she answers that cry in the dark.

And her answer is a light, and the light is good.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired closely by [a discussion which I read on Ravenskyewalker's tumblr](http://ravenskyewalker.tumblr.com/post/161562648841/heroofthreefaces-tillthenexttimedoctor) about various potential fixes to the episode, to all of the originators of which I owe the credit, though by no means does this fic cover all their amazing ideas.


End file.
